The Cook - Softcover

Wayne Macauley: Wayne Macauley lives in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of three highly acclaimed novels, Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe, Caravan Story and The Cook, and a short-fiction collection, Other Stories.

www.waynemacauley.com

'This is a satiric novel of rigour, strange beauty, and impeccable, brazen style.'
Winnipeg Free Press

'Irresistible―The Cook reminds us just how exciting it is to read a wonderful and original novel.'
Lloyd Jones

'A riot of a book! Gripping and subversive...'
Nick Cave

'Blackly funny and deliciously satirical, this book skewers our culture of food worship while feeding our curiosity about kitchens.'
Age Magazine

'On the surface this novel plays on our obsession with reality TV, fame and in particular cooking shows such as MasterChef. But as you read on it becomes apparent that questions of class, aspiration and success are at the heart of this complex, nuanced book...This is a black parable on contemporary society.'
Tim Coronel, Bookseller+Publisher

'This is a novel that punctuates the fine life, eviscerates food wankery and highlights the emptiness and decay of the distracted and wealthy...Macauley has so effectively captured the voice of Zac, who believes this is the life he wants, when the dream starts to unravel we are immersed in Zac’s delusion along with him.'
Rachel Edwards, The Book Show

'The Cook is a confident and potent piece of work. With its claustrophobic first-person narration and its appealing combination of black humour and broad comedy...One of the novel’s most impressive achievements is its creation of a droll, readable, vernacular prose, which is not only rhythmically insistent but able to hint at the tension and the instability beneath its apparently detached and affectless surface.'
Weekend Australian

'In the past few years, Wayne Macauley has published some of the most memorable fiction going in this country. His books and stories are satirical fables in which the properties are recognisably contemporary and Australian, indeed Melburnian, but his use of them is carefully distanced from realism and he has a prose style of remarkable poise and control that can allow his narratives to take off into the bizarre without ever losing their cool. Beneath that cool is a steady anger at the depredations of late capitalism, at the attempts of laissez-faire to turn us all into Homo economicus or addicted consumers...This is Macauley’s longest novel so far and marks a brilliant development in his dark vision of the way we live.'
Sunday Age

'This brilliant and richly layered book by Melbourne author Wayne Macauley is almost impossible to put down...For Macauley is writing about nothing less than the social, cultural and moral excesses of late capitalism: about the logical absurdities of conspicuous consumption, the decadence of “fine dining” and the contemporary obsession with cooking.'
Sydney Morning Herald

'Reading The Cook is an intense experience, like stepping into a steamy, industrial kitchen, with pots boiling over on every surface...consistently hilarious.'
Daily Telegraph

'A marvellous experiment in voice.'
Financial Times UK


'This is a satiric novel of rigour, strange beauty, and impeccable, brazen style.'
Winnipeg Free Press

'Irresistible The Cook reminds us just how exciting it is to read a wonderful and original novel.'
Lloyd Jones

'A riot of a book! Gripping and subversive '
Nick Cave

'Blackly funny and deliciously satirical, this book skewers our culture of food worship while feeding our curiosity about kitchens.'
Age Magazine

'On the surface this novel plays on our obsession with reality TV, fame and in particular cooking shows such as MasterChef. But as you read on it becomes apparent that questions of class, aspiration and success are at the heart of this complex, nuanced book This is a black parable on contemporary society.'
Tim Coronel, Bookseller+Publisher

'This is a novel that punctuates the fine life, eviscerates food wankery and highlights the emptiness and decay of the distracted and wealthy Macauley has so effectively captured the voice of Zac, who believes this is the life he wants, when the dream starts to unravel we are immersed in Zac’s delusion along with him.'
Rachel Edwards, The Book Show

'The Cook is a confident and potent piece of work. With its claustrophobic first-person narration and its appealing combination of black humour and broad comedy One of the novel’s most impressive achievements is its creation of a droll, readable, vernacular prose, which is not only rhythmically insistent but able to hint at the tension and the instability beneath its apparently detached and affectless surface.'
Weekend Australian

'In the past few years, Wayne Macauley has published some of the most memorable fiction going in this country. His books and stories are satirical fables in which the properties are recognisably contemporary and Australian, indeed Melburnian, but his use of them is carefully distanced from realism and he has a prose style of remarkable poise and control that can allow his narratives to take off into the bizarre without ever losing their cool. Beneath that cool is a steady anger at the depredations of late capitalism, at the attempts of laissez-faire to turn us all into Homo economicus or addicted consumers This is Macauley’s longest novel so far and marks a brilliant development in his dark vision of the way we live.'
Sunday Age

'This brilliant and richly layered book by Melbourne author Wayne Macauley is almost impossible to put down For Macauley is writing about nothing less than the social, cultural and moral excesses of late capitalism: about the logical absurdities of conspicuous consumption, the decadence of fine dining” and the contemporary obsession with cooking.'
Sydney Morning Herald

'Reading The Cook is an intense experience, like stepping into a steamy, industrial kitchen, with pots boiling over on every surface consistently hilarious.'
Daily Telegraph

'A marvellous experiment in voice.'
Financial Times UK